'Good Behavior' postmortem: Michelle Dockery and creator Chad Hodge on that camping trip
Good Behavior fans know to expect twists, but the one in this week’s episode was difficult to watch.
Letty (Michelle Dockery) planned on stealing the money for Jacob’s private school tuition, but hit man Javier (Juan Diego Botto) didn’t want her to risk getting caught. Instead, he took another job — to kill a rapist while the young man was on a camping trip with his buddies. Letty made it her mission to keep Javier from being alone with his mark, Bryce (Barrett Carnahan).
It was obviously a very sensitive episode, Dockery says, because of the subject matter. “The person that they’re dealing with is a very dangerous young man, and Letty feels like she can manipulate him [and save his life] by befriending him, flirting with him,” she says. “But of course she’s playing with fire because he is a rapist who has attacked more than one woman.”
When Bryce finds Letty alone in the woods and makes a move, he doesn’t take no for an answer and tries to overpower her. Javier arrives in time to stop the attack — then leads Bryce away at gunpoint to jump off a cliff to his death. “It puts both Letty and Javier into this gray area: What is it OK to do for money? When is it OK for someone to die? Is it ever OK?” creator Chad Hodge asks. “The show is about the gray area that these two people live in, which is like life for all of us, really. There’s no black and white, even though a lot of people like to think there is.”
The story added another layer when Jacob (Nyles Julian Steele) heard from his neighbor Apple (Alexa Nisenson) that she saw Bryce jump and Javier did nothing to stop him. “Jacob is a very perceptive, smart kid, and if the two people who are raising you are a hit man and a thief, and they’re actively doing their jobs, you’re going to notice that something’s not right, and I thought we couldn’t spend too long before we confronted that issue,” Hodge says. “Jacob knowing that something’s wrong and asking them about it, and how they deal with that, launches us into Episode 3.”
Once Letty and Javier handle Jacob’s line of questioning, the Oct. 29 episode proves to be the series’ most fun hour to date, as Jacob visits his dad for Christmas and Letty and Javier head to a luxury hotel with her mother, Estelle (Lusia Strus), and Rob (Joey Kern). Just remember: “This show is ever-surprising, and you never know which way it’s going to turn, which is what I love about it,” Dockery says.
Good Behavior airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on TNT.
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